Elbow Hurts When I Straighten or Extend My Arm

As you go through your daily grind and routine, you straighten and extend your arm hundreds of times without giving it any thought. So why one day, seemingly out of nowhere, does your elbow hurt when you extend or straighten your arm?

For some people, it can simply be from performing a job, activity or sport the day before that you have never done before or it’s been a while since you did.

For example, maybe you moved or were helping someone move which involved lifting heavy objects from a low surface to a higher surface. Maybe you were playing tennis or some other racquet sport, which you haven’t played in some time, now your elbow hurts when you extend or straighten your arm.

Perhaps you performed some other type of job that required a tight grip on an object such as a screwdriver, hammer, saw or drill. If any of these tasks sound familiar to you, then this is the source of your elbow pain.

Any type of task that requires gripping an object such as using tools, lifting heavy bags, or simply turning a key in a door causes your elbow to hurt.

Now for others, maybe you have just awoken in the morning and as you get out of bed and stretch your arms outwards and/or upwards, you feel pain in your elbow when you straighten and extend your arms. The day before was just another day like the day before that and the day before that. There was no change in your daily tasks or activities, so why could be the root cause of your hurt elbow?

This is when you need to put your investigative skills to the test.

Did you bump your elbow recently? Have you ever had an elbow injury in the past, and yes even as far back as 5 years? Have you noticed your grip getting weaker recently? Do you experience and elbow pain when performing simple tasks such as shaking hands with someone, turning a doorknob to open a door, or even gripping a coffee mug?

If you’ve answered “yes” to any of the above questions, then there is a high probability that you are suffering from a repetitive stress injury called tennis elbow. Tennis elbow is the number one most reported repetitive stress injury which affects millions of people worldwide every year. It usually affects people between the ages of 35-65 but can really affect anyone at any age.

Now that you know you have tennis elbow, what else should you be aware of? If you’ve just noticed this elbow problem, then you probably also have some elbow inflammation. The longer that you have tennis elbow, the less inflammation there will be.

The longer you wait to treat tennis elbow the harder it will be to recover from because you are breaking down the elbow tendons and muscles. If you wait even longer for treatment, you will most likely develop scar tissue which can be incredibly challenging to break down. If it’s been 3 weeks or longer since you’ve noticed that your elbow hurts when you extend or straighten your arm, then there is a good chance that you won’t have any swelling or inflammation and you can pin the root cause of your elbow pain on some sort of activity you are doing on a daily basis that is a repetitive task.

So where do you go from here? What are your treatment options? How long will it take to recover? Will you ever be able to straighten or extend your arm without your elbow hurting? Will this elbow pain ever go away completely?

These are all questions that I had when I too suffered from tennis elbow. The good news is that, “YES”, you can fully recover from tennis elbow and cure it completely so that it never comes back!

This much is true … you can cure your tennis elbow quickly and easily using 5 simple, step-by-step techniques from the comfort of your own living room, while sitting in your comfy chair watching your favorite television show without any special medical gadgets or exercise equipment!